Catching up...

After a lovely long weekend in Kansas, full of many opportunities to over-eat amazing, Mennonite soul foods, it's back to the grind. The air is officially crisp, and when we arrived back to our house last evening, the thermostat read 51.5. We had hoped not to turn on our heat until at least November, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

Baking is so much more enjoyable in the fall and winter than in summer, and letting the warm oven air heat the kitchen and dining room always feels so cozy. Here are two recipes to warm you up!

27. Broccoli Rice, pg. 128

An incredibly simple recipe to pull together, with few ingredients to mess with. For color and spunk, I used a medium red onion and at the end of the sauté time, added about 3-4 oz. of fresh, sliced mushrooms. (I would imagine you could just dump a can or partial can of mushrooms in, if you like). I mixed the onions/mushrooms with the cooked broccoli and rice and put it into my baking dish. I simply poured the milk over top and then sprinkled the grated cheese on top of everything.

It turned out lovely! If you have lots of broccoli that needs to be used, this would be a great recipe to double and stick one pan in the freezer.

Overall: 4 out of 5 Tasty, fast, colorful.

28. Skillet Cabbage, pg. 225

Another easy and fast concoction. This recipe is easy to modify to meet the number of people you are serving - and odds are that if you've got a head of cabbage, the 3-4 c. this calls for will barely take care of any of it :) Slicing the carrots into coins keeps them slightly crunchy.

We tend to like our spices to be cooked into our foods (versus being simply on the surface), so I added the paprika, pepper and soy sauce just after adding the cabbage and carrots. (Since I used soy sauce, I didn't add salt.) When serving, I topped with roasted, unsalted cashews. Delicious!

Overall: 4 out of 5 Same as above.

I feel like I'm not telling much about these recipes, but they're both so simple and straight-forward, that there is not much to tell. If you like these vegetables, you will like these dishes. Period. :)